Simon seemed bereft this morning, he hugged the pasture gate looking for the large crowds of people who came to see him at our Open House, many bringing sacks of carrots, oat cookies and apple slices. Lulu and Fanny got plenty of food and attention as well. Simon seemed a bit deflated this morning, he kept looking out in the yard for his many adoring fans. They waited for hours to see him, pet him, feed him. He is a love donkey, and he got a lot of richly deserved love.
They will be back, I assured him, and I tossed a whole bag of carrot bits on the ground for him. He was only slightly mollified.
Simon loves the ladies, and he loves kids and he loves carrots and apples and cookies. Life was good. I think he was wondering where everybody went. This is life, I told him, one day awash in carrots, the next day plain ol’ hay. Roll with it.
Red is ready to work, every day. This morning, I hauled the water hose into the pasture and Red was standing watch over the sheep. This is his element, where he is most at home. His work is not only sheep, but people, and this was Dr. Karen Thompson’s vision for him when she gave him to me. He is fulfilling his destiny, I am proud to make this so. I will honor my commitment to Karen to the end, he is a therapy dog as well as a work dog, and he does honor to both.
The world is without question a better place when you encounter people who are kind, courteous and competent. In my town, in my life, there are many such people. The spiritual gurus and the therapists all say good people come to you when you are ready to receive them, they appear when you have opened yourself to them. I do not know if this is so or not, there is something to it. At the farm, it does not hurt if our UPS driver also loves dogs and all animals.
Bernie is, we believe, the world’s finest UPS driver, and we have never had a bad one. Bernie brings the outside world to me – clothes, books, computer supplies. He protects packages from the rain, is always helpful and cheerful, works hard, maneuvers his big brown truck through rain and snow and ice, he always has biscuits in his pockets. I think he loves his job, but if he didn’t, he wouldn’t tell me, he does not complain about his life.
If we are not home, he has even braved Frieda to get fragile packages inside in bad weather. Lenore loves UPS drivers in general, Bernie in particular. At our other farm in Hebron, she hopped into the back of a UPS truck and drove off with the driver, who was astonished to see her in his truck when he stopped a few minutes away. He returned Lenore quickly and apologetically, Lenore’s tail never stopped wagging, I am sure she would have happily gone home with him for awhile.
Today, when we got back from a walk, Bernie was pulling into the driveway. Lenore, thrilled to see him, came bounding over the truck and jumped in, she got a biscuit. Red saw this from the pasture gate and joined in, they both got some biscuits. Bernie is a friend, he follows the blog sometimes, we appreciate him, he comes to our Open Houses, is interested in our life, brings great stories of the animals on his route – he has many photos of them in his Iphone. Bernie is one of the first people I give copies of my signed books too. After all, he brings them to me.
The big and beautiful carriages horses came to me last night, as they sometimes do, perhaps it was a dream, one of them came and whispered in my ear that their story in New York has become a magical and surreal dance, the horses called it The Twisted Ballet, and it seemed so true, and so very real that it sent a chill up and down my spine as the big moon came bursting through.
In the night, these horses are so beautiful, their snorts echo through the pasture, silence the owls and the coyotes, send the mice and the snakes back into their holes, reflect the moon off of their great and shiny coats. Listen to us, they say. At first, I feared for them, I thought they were so weak and unprotected. I know better now, so does the mayor of New York City.
Chief Avrol Looking Horse of the Sioux Nation told me while we sat on a bench in Central Park this summer that the horses were powerful spirits, that they were talking to me, they had chosen me, prayed for me to awaken and speak to them. The horses talk to me all the time, he said, it is a part of our world. I can hardly believe such a thing, I told the Chief, it is unimaginable to me, up on my farm in the country. It cannot be true. I thought it was madness.
That idea, hearing it on that bench, that was surreal. But I have changed now, I know it is true, I don’t think about it anymore, I just accept it and give thanks for this dialogue. The horses did chose me and others to speak for them, they gave me the strength and power to write about them, to seek the truth and find it. They showed me where to look. They called upon me as well to call attention to the great injustice being done the human beings in the carriage trade, the owners of the horses, the drivers.
This has been such a gift to me, I have rarely felt more alive as an author, more worthwhile as a journalist. What is the point of writing all of these words if they do not touch the souls and spirits of people, if they do not uncover truth? The horses called me to recognize who I really was. Words are important, they told. Words have power. Words are stronger than lies, they can kill lies and expose them to the light.
The mayor of New York does not yet know what the horses know, and neither do the carriage drivers of the people who own the stables, there is a monumental truth that is right under their noses, but they are still too battered to see it. They are not the ones in danger, he is. It is he who has been done in, by his sanctioning of cruelty, abuse, fear and dishonesty.
I see it more clearly every day. The horses are speaking, their spirits are unleashed, they are calling our attention to the sorry mess we have brought to the world, and to our hateful dealings with one another. The horses will undo the mayor for his fecklessness and cowardice and arrogance. For his contempt for Mother Earth and the natural world. It is he who will be banished one day, not them. This is underway. Day by day, it is clearer that the horses have done the unthinkable, they have already and in the face of staggering odds defeated him and his enraged allies in the movement that calls itself a movement for animal rights. They have begun his unraveling. He cannot ban them, he has been denied and rejected.
First, the horses revealed the true nature of the movement seeking to drive them out of our world. The horses have called us to see the lies, rage and disconnection that underlie the animal rights movement in New York City. They take money under false pretense. They do not tell the truth, they despise free speech and negotiation, they advocate the hatred of human beings in the name of loving animals. And they have lied and lied and lied about the horses and the people who ride them – almost everyone can see it now – the horses are not abused or mistreated, they are not the animals who need rescue.
They have exploited animals in the worst possible way, to endanger them and exploit their suffering to raise money and gain political power. If not for the horses, many of us would not know this, would not have seen it.
The horses – with no mayor, developer, millions of dollars, angry websites and blogs, marketers and publicists to defend them – have made short shrift of their enraged tormentors. These self-righteous people seemed so powerful in January, but they seem no more powerful than the flies that buzz around the stables in the summer. No one in the great city believes them any more, not the newspapers, the unions, the businesses, the members of the City Council, the people who live in the city.
The mayor dances in the Twisted Ballet, he hides, he dodges, he runs. Everywhere he goes, the horses are there, waiting for him, beautiful, proud, spiritual. They have encircled him, showing us his weakness and confusion, his lack of courage. No matter what he does or when he dodges, he cannot escape them or their message and meaning. They will not be lied about, they will not be banished again by the greedy and the arrogant. He has walked into their trap, he cannot send them away, they are not going away, they will haunt him every day of his political life.
The highest calling off a political leader in a free nation is to protect freedom and property. In this, the horses have brought light to his great failure to do so.
Susan Sontag wrote once that the past itself, in the face of great change, has become the most surreal of subjects. It makes it possible to see the real beauty in what is vanishing. This is what the horses have done, they have shown us their real beauty and worth, they have called us to see the injustice being done to so many good human beings in the name of loving animals.
This is the Twisted Ballet, the horses have never been more reviled, they have never been more loved. They have never been in more danger, they have never been safer. So many of us are awakening to their purpose and meaning and importance in our lives. They are sacred things, a part of us and our past and future.
In my dreams, they show me that it is not the horses we have to fear for, it is us, the lost souls of human beings who have lost touch with the natural world, betrayed them and their sacred spirits, and threatened the world. I am beginning to understand the message of the chief:
